


Old Words

by thehobblefootalchemist



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Episode Fix-it, F/M, Gen, I remembered Girls Night Out exists and this is my response to it, Now with an additional chapter because I can't help myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehobblefootalchemist/pseuds/thehobblefootalchemist
Summary: “Just what exactly doyouhave to be so angry about, anyway?”Now it was more than just the mustache that was trembling.  “Youhypocrite,” he hissed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In my opinion Girls Night Out is a flimsy episode, to say the least, but the part about it that's always made me angriest was the way it took Spectra and Bertrand's interaction and shot it to pieces for no reason. After recalling its existence the other day I watched it again and afterwards near-immediately sat down to write this as an attempt to give the two of them some justice while still taking what was aired on the show into account. It's got a few headcanons about their powers and relationship that I'll be retroactively exploring soon in an origins longfic.

Ah—back in the Ghost Zone. Again. Spectra gnashed her teeth as soon as she sensed the ectoplasmic energies surrounding her; being dumped back here like trash grated on her more than anything else about a failed plan. She heard Kitty and Ember grumbling beside her, and when she looked over found that they appeared as beaten up as she felt.

_Serves them right_ , she thought viciously. Their powers had been the ones exploited by that damnable Fenton family, turned upon them to be responsible for their capture. That had been the third time now that she’d experienced that infuriating Thermos.

_Never again_ , she vowed, flying away from the other two ghosts in disgust. All they had accomplished together was prove that taking new partners on expeditions was a colossal waste in every sense.

Despite this line of thought, however, Spectra was still surprised, when she arrived back at the spur of floating mountain they’d left him on, to find that Bertrand was not there. He’d still been addled by Kitty’s powers when they’d left the area—she’d fully expected him to take a while to recover. Or at the very least _wait_ for her, the diminutive cad.

Huffing, she turned her course towards his lair. It was probably the best rock to turn over first.

\---

Even with the Zone’s absurdly high ectoplasm levels, Spectra could feel that she hadn’t been absorbing its energy as effectively as she should have been, and had subsequently come to the realization that the Fentons must have been getting creative with their inhibiting equipment. A journey to Bertrand’s should have meant nothing, and yet by the time she was within sight of the place’s entrance her strength was beginning to fail. That weakness…that awful _weakness_ she despised so much was creeping back in. Resultantly she was angrier even than she’d already been when her fist made contact with the doorway.

There was no answer to her first series of hammering knocks, nor to the second. It was only on the third volley that a voice emanated from within: “What do you want?”

Spectra blinked. She’d heard Bertrand at his most scathing, but rarely ever was it even slightly in her direction. “To be let in, obviously,” she shouted back, equally vehement.

The action of the door opening was calm, but the face of the one who had done it was anything but. His greeting was a dangerous whisper. “Oh I bet you do.”

There was very little that could shock her, but she had to admit she was caught off guard by his appearance. He was in his disliked human shape, and its normally bright green eyes were gleaming quite, quite red. As cover she threw on her best haughty expression and spoke in tones of mocking politeness. “And is that a thing that’s occurring?”

Bertrand considered it with narrowed eyes for some time. “Only because I think this conversation should be private,” he eventually told her, moving back just far enough that she could glide inside. There was no ceremony in the re-closing of the door; it near slammed back in place as soon as Spectra’s form was all the way through.

This, in her opinion, was getting very old very fast. He wasn’t the one who’d just gotten the nonexistent snot beaten out of him once again by the Fentons. “And just what are we going to be conversing about?” Bertrand made no reply to that, and that acted as a whetstone to her anger. “Why’d you keep the shape even after staying in the Zone?” she asked, needling right where she knew it would get a reaction. “You usually only look like that when you think we’re going undercover.”

His mustache was visibly trembling from the force he was using to grit his teeth. “This is the form that was least likely to keep damaging things.”

Prompted by the comment to actually take a look around, Spectra saw that the other ghost’s lair was more trashed than she’d ever seen it. Any surface that had something on it had been upended, and a great many gashes she’d never seen before had been gouged into the walls and floor.

“Looks like you had quite the hissy-fit,” she commented dryly, turning back to him with one eyebrow raised. “Just what exactly do _you_ have to be so angry about, anyway?”

Now it was more than just the mustache that was trembling. “You _hypocrite_ ,” he hissed.

Spectra bristled. “You’re not the one who got the hell knocked out of her by a group of damn ghost hunters! In fact, from what I can see, all you’ve managed to do on your own has been to run home and act like one of those whiny teenagers we used to feed off of!”

“Hypocrite!” he called her again, only this time it was in a yell. “You want to know why—I’m—SO—ANGRY?!”

His human guise left him along with the words. When truly unhinged Bertrand was incapable of keeping his emotions from affecting his shape, and Spectra watched with some awe and the tiniest iota of fear as his teeth expanded to ragged fangs, his clenched fists bursting outward into knifed paws. The form he convulsed into in the end looked as if someone had attempted to sculpt a wolf but only had knowledge of the eldritch, and took far more time than usual as well as—impossibly—what looked like a fair amount of actual, physical pain.

“Harassing me about why I’m acting this way, the _nerve_ you have!” he thundered. His serrated tail lashed, the impassioned snarling becoming higher pitched, louder, accusatory. “You _LEFT ME!_ And now you’re chasing after me acting as if nothing’s happened—as if you hadn’t basically labeled me WORTHLESS to you!”

He was _pacing_ , his feet actually making contact with the floor like any earth creature’s would, hackles raised and eyes burning. On reflex alone her hand reached towards him but he jerked backward, faster than the cougar he was so fond of turning into. “Don’t _touch_ me!!”

But she didn’t have to, she noticed. Spectra’s powers had grown throughout the years, maturing to a point where she no longer required physical contact with her subjects to feed upon their emotions; she could sense or absorb them as she pleased from a distance of many feet, even when they weren’t as strong as Bertrand’s were now. He’d been attempting to keep them from her but they rolled from him like a tide, a combination of resentment and something that was—Spectra was given pause.

He tasted strangely like heartache. She’d never picked that up from him before, not in over twenty years…or, she realized, she’d just never given him cause to feel it before now.

Bertrand was still glaring at her, eyes hot and defiant. “Well?” he challenged. “You can go ahead and start breathing this in any time now. I know that’s what you want, since you wouldn’t be back here if the humans hadn’t gotten the better of you.”

Through the tunnel of memory she heard the whispers of their long-ago promise. _Not each other. Everyone else, but never each other._

Some of the fire went out of her, then. Things had to be far gone if he was assuming she was planning to go back on as meaningful an agreement as that. Out there on that rock she’d been caught up in what the other two were saying about their partners’ shortcomings—that had gotten her incensed about her and her own partner’s failures as of late, and…

Bertrand had taken quite the hit, she realized belatedly, and not quite a fair one. Spectra more than embraced her narcissism, but was she really on the same level of pettiness as a forever-sixteen year-old and a burned-out pop star? She liked to think not. At least not toward someone who wasn’t her enemy. While Bertrand was many things, not the least of which was occasionally incompetent, he had never truly been her enemy.

He was still waiting for her to act, his expression becoming guarded as well as fuming as he watched the subtle changes going over hers. “Well?” he asked again.

“Don’t think so little of me,” she shot back, a few defensive embers flaring briefly to cover her discomfort. “And my energies are just fine, anyway.”

The muzzle peeled back from one overlong canine tooth. “Then get on with telling me why you’re here. Or get out.”

Spectra was surprised he would say that, and surprised as well by the fact that it affected her, even though she could sense a cutting fear in him that she actually would leave. Those things conspired to make her consider her reply with far more care than she’d done thus far. After chewing the words she admitted, “Because those two weren’t better than you.”

He’d gone quite stiff, and when he spoke next it sounded vaguely strangled. “Is that an apology?”

She breathed out sharply through her nose, an old human habit of indignation she’d never been able to shake, and looked away from him. Being called out was something she never reacted well to. “You know that’s not my style.”

“Penelope.”

Now it was him who was being unfair, calling her by her first name and with that kind of softness. “Not in so many words,” she finally replied, still not meeting his eyes.

“Today I need more than that,” he told her. “I _deserve_ more than that.”

Was she aware of those things? Yes. But her pride was still a fault. “…all I can say is that I know it was a mistake to go along with those two.” _It was a mistake to leave you._

There was a long pause on his end, followed by a long exhale, and it was a hard tell whether the sound was an expression of resignation or a signal of acceptance. Perhaps it was both.

Wanting to regain her footing in the conversation, Spectra (albeit in a more subdued manner than usual) fell back into trying to take some kind of charge. “Things still need to be better than where they’ve been lately. But I’m not going to achieve that with them.”

“If you plan on asking to achieve it alongside me again, keep in mind that I don’t think I’ll tolerate anything else like what you did today.” The anger had departed Bertrand’s tone, but resolve filled its place. “You know that I—you’re aware of how I feel about you, but I won’t let myself be used.”

It wasn’t possible at that point to hide the needle of guilt she’d been attempting to ignore. “We’ll try for how it was before,” she conceded in a low voice. “It’ll be us using everybody else.”

“That’s all I ask. All that’s given me joy these past few decades.”

Padding footsteps started towards her, their sound beginning to change as his shape did, and when he was within distance to do so he gently clasped her hands in his own.

“…you _do_ need to feed,” he sighed, his fingers brushing over the wrinkles starting to web her skin. Spectra kept very still, realizing all at once how much she’d been missing by keeping him at arm’s length for so long. “Lie low here, and I’ll go out and bring back someone we can pick at.”

Bertrand was on the point of shutting the door after himself when she managed to call something out: “I was right. You’re definitely less inept than those girls and their stupid boyfriends.”

He merely continued on as he was, their many years with one another providing him with the knowledge that that was, under the circumstances, possibly the nicest thing she could have said to him at the time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I cycle into having Feelings about these two every February? So I rolled with it, and this happened--I hope those who enjoyed the original oneshot enjoy this addition

“Now go on, scram.” Bertrand grew a foot specifically for the purpose of booting the ghost out of his lair, and slammed and locked the door before they’d have to hear any more of its mewling. “I know we were tough on it, but it could at least have had the courtesy of not just sobbing into the carpet when I told it to get lost.”

“It should be grateful that we even let it go.”

He frowned. Penelope’s voice still sounded husky, not at all like the smooth tones she commanded when operating at one hundred percent. Floating back in her direction, he inspected her as closely as he dared without danger of offending her. Though their victim had only just gone her form was visibly beginning to lose its composure again, and she’d had to take a seat like any human would have after running a great distance.

“Did they hit you with a Peeler?” he asked, not able to hide his worry. It had taken her nearly a month to get her shapeshifting ability back after that first incident at Casper High—he had no wish to see her so incapacitated again.

Her eyes had closed. “No…I got blasted with _something_ that’s got me out of sorts, though…”

When she leaned forward, fingers rubbing her temples, Bertrand chanced drifting closer. It was fifty-fifty whether she was going to appreciate this or not, but he had to try. His hand settled on her shoulder, and he gave it a light squeeze.

Penelope stiffened very briefly but otherwise did nothing, so he took that as tacit permission to continue. Situating himself behind her chair he began to work his fingers into her muscles. It started off slow and light but he applied more pressure as time went on, methodically working each part of her shoulders and neck.

At one point she let out a low sound when he hit a knot , and in response he said, “You know, I could probably work this out better if you were in your other form.”

She scoffed and glanced back. “You’re just saying that because you like looking at that one better.”

“Maybe,” he allowed, smiling at her.

An unidentifiable glimmer appeared in her eye. There was a few seconds’ pause before her form smoked out, dark flame misting down her body until it took on the shadowy appearance she’d first manifested in the Zone with. He squeezed her shoulder again, encouragingly.

“I still don’t know how you can prefer this appearance over any of my others,” she muttered, but the consternation in her tone was belied by a small flutter in her aura, which gave away the fact that after all the years they’d been together she was still pleased that he did.

Bertrand chuckled softly. “And it still mystifies me whenever you tell me my human disguise looks cute,” he assured her, taking a moment to brush his knuckles down her cheek.

“Well it does.” Her tone was a little absent. “You should see your face when I tell you that we can go out for coffee.”

“Cappuccino does remain my favorite.” He didn’t quite know what to make of the way she was still looking at him, and so lacking any other direction to take things he simply returned to caring for the knot just above her shoulder-blade.

Bertrand knew that certain other ghosts might call him weak for this, for forgiving her seemingly so easily after such an unexpected slight. But none of them could feel what he did, there being no other ghost he knew of who had anything even remotely close to his experience with sensing emotions—not a one could have caught the guilt coming off of her after their confrontation. She had hurt him, yes, she had hurt him…but in spite of her inability to communicate it she did also feel genuinely awful for it. And for him that was enough.

Especially since he understood far more than she suspected about her motivations for interacting with Kitty and Ember. The other two ghosts had found it a little odd that Penelope would care to talk with them, he had seen that, and yet for him it was clear from the beginning why she’d sought out their company. Their actual ages were a matter up for some debate but the fact was that both ghosts came off as undeniably _youthful_. And so, by association, he knew she’d been hoping…

Penelope’s voice caught his attention—she had said his name, very quietly. Their eyes met and held, red gazing into red, and after some seconds one of her hands lifted and touched his where it had stilled just over her collarbone.

If Bertrand had had breath to stop in his throat, it would have. As it was he could feel something in his chest quivering. It had been nigh on a year since they’d shared a moment even half this close, and while he’d far from forgotten how it felt he’d had no reason recently to expect anything like it any time soon. He would have been embarrassed by how much it was shaking him if he weren’t able to pick up that she was currently teetering on the same kind of mental precipice.

“Oh, just come here,” she said finally, breathing the words out in a rush.

Penelope twisted in her seat to reach for him and he reciprocated gladly, the pair making quick work of embracing one another so tightly they were in danger of disrupting the solidity of their forms. Their tails wound together like the swirls of the dimension outside his lair’s walls: distinctly green and black and yet undeniably linked, impossible to tell just where one color ended and the other began.

They floated together in silence for a considerable amount of time. Bertrand knew he was projecting just how badly he’d missed this, missed _her_ , but he couldn’t help himself, much as he knew she wouldn’t be letting her remorse for her actions show as much as it did then if not for the distracting sense of relief she was tumbling into as deeply as him. Neither could gain life energy from such moments as this, but for both the quiet intimacy fulfilled a different sort of need.

“Would you like me to find us a new meal?” he murmured eventually. “Or would you rather sleep for a while?”

She let out a long exhale. “No more grocery runs today.” One of her hands found his, squeezed. “Just float us to bed.”

He blinked at the plural. “Of course.”

Still not wanting to assume too much—of all positive feelings, hope was cruelest—Bertrand made to scoot back from her when he’d done his job of bringing them to his den. But contrary to his expectations she did not allow him to leave her side, tightening her grip on his hand and shooting him a drowsy and somewhat fragile glare.

They hadn’t slept beside one another since the aftermath of the North Mercy Hospital. Penelope hadn’t wanted it. Reclosing the distance he’d put between them, he felt like he was already dreaming.

Purely on instinct his shape changed as she settled in, and soon she was curled against the cool-furred flank of the cougar. The mumbled sound of satisfaction she made as she threaded her fingers through his pelt startled him into a purr.

Penelope exhaled again, this time far less from weariness than content, and it was the easiest thing in the world to indulge her when she nestled a cheek against his shoulder and told him not to stop.


End file.
